Karl Marx: Capital Commodities
on Saturday, May 23, 2020Karl Marx Money Quote saying Capital assets can include cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as well as manufacturing equipment or production facilities and grow in value. Karl Marx said:
“Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being valued, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs” — Karl Marx
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In this quote, Karl Marx is characterizing how capital seems to autonomously generate more capital and wealth through economic activity within a capitalist system. He notes that capital takes the forms of money and commodities that are valued in the market.
Marx then uses the metaphor of capital having an “occult ability” or mysterious power to “add value to itself” and “bring forth living offspring” or yield profits, in the sense that money invested in business ventures and assets can generate returns simply through being put to work in the economy.
The overall interpretation is that Marx is critiquing the notion that capital appears to almost magically or supernaturally reproduce itself and increase in quantity, when in reality this growth stems from the labor and productivity of workers within the capitalist system of private ownership and profit-seeking.
Birthday: May 5, 1818 – Death: March 14, 1883